A Heated Debate Between Two Charismatic Geniuses: A Cardinal Fan (Jeff Lung) and a Tiger Fan (Allen Krause)

Results tagged ‘ Movies ’

It’s finally a nice spring day in DC. The sun is out, the birds are chirping, the Canadian geese have taken over everything. Oh, and the Nationals are already six and a half games out of first place. That can only mean one thing. It must be April.

I love this time of year. There’s still hope for the Tigers and still hope for my fantasy baseball teams before the long slog toward September and mediocrity. It’s warm during the day but not so warm that it’s uncomfortable. The end of April is really one of the best times to be a baseball fan.

But this time of the year is also special for another reason. In the next few weeks, as the drama begins to build around the early season fortunes of various teams, drama also starts to build at movie theaters around the country as the first wave of blockbusters hit the screen.

But really, on a Friday afternoon like this it just feels good to sit back and reflect on making it through another winter (residents of southern California and other warm states are exempt from this contemplation). But, as we wait for all the inevitable drama about to unfold, it’s also a perfect opportunity to appreciate the drama inherent in life. Not sure what I’m talking about? This should help:

Feisty factions of conservative right wing constituents are finally going to get what they have always wanted. Indeed, after a series of anti-republican films exploiting the low-blow antics of unsavory characters such as Richard Nixon and George W. Bush reached wide audiences in 2008, the GOP is all smiles knowing the biggest, baddest politico docudrama to ever hit the big screen is well on its way!

Special Relationship, the upcoming film starring Julianne Moore as democratic juggernaut Hillary Clinton and Dennis Quaid as the always promiscuous Bill Clinton, will explore the finer points of Slick Willy’s extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky and his wife’s subsequent decision to stick by his side (so she could run for the New York senate, and eventually the presidency).

Moore is a decent actress. I see her pulling off this role of a lifetime no problem. Quaid as Clinton? What a wonderful opportunity to repeat his 1987 world-class performance from Inner Space! I can hardly wait, folks!

And the Hollywood hoopla doesn’t just end there, dear readers. I am super excited about some other upcoming films that are in the early stages of development:

The Little MVP Who Could: The Dustin Pedroia StoryStarring Macaulay Culkin as Pedroia, this film aims to highlight the undying will of small stature phenoms on baseball diamonds all across the galaxy. Also features Manny Ramirez as the evil space alien predator intent on disrupting all things Red Sox until the bitter intergalactic end.

Jacked! The Alex Rodriguez StoryPre-production on this film has been stalled until Alex can get his entire story straight. While the writers continue to amend the script as best they can, more problems seem eminent as Vin Diesel, originally slated to star as A-Rod, pulled out of the project noting that not even he would subject himself to performance enhancing drugs, whether his trusted cousin bought them in the D.R. or not.

Yeah, I Hit .213 Last Year, What’s It to Ya, Buddy? The Khalil Greene StorySean Penn stars in this not-so-action-packed drama about how decent defense often allows a poor offensive performer to wallow in the ongoing apathy that is the San Diego Padres (and later, St. Louis Cardinals).

Where Have I Gone? The Rafael Palmeiro StoryIn perhaps the most poignantly cast role of the century, Tony Danza portrays PED-raging anti-hero Rafael Palmeiro not because he looks like him (he doesn’t) but because his career is as equally irrelevant.

And finally, what promises to be a most entertaining entanglement of hopes, dreams, egos and narcissism:

Me, Me, Me! The Curt Schilling StoryPosthumously directed by Stanley Kubrick, this tale of unfettered vainglory explores the tired, whiny affectations of one number 38 through standard Kubrick mind-busts like a minimalistic score and plenty of drawn-out steady-cam shots. Accurately portraying the role of Schilling will be the outspoken and very homosexual Nathan Lane. Who else to better force Curt into yet another self-consuming fit of rage than a flamboyantly gay ultra-liberal left wing Broadway icon with plenty of career left in him?

Much of the political uproar over the past week centered on Rush Limbaugh’s address at CPAC in which he reaffirmed his desire to see President Obama fail. Understandably, many people are up in arms over this statement but some of them seem to be upset for all the wrong reasons. Obama is not the messiah and he will have policy failures. The sooner we accept that inevitability, the better.

But there is another reason why Rush’s words should have incensed us. Not only is his naive desire to see our country’s problems worsen ignorant at best, it also goes against everything we’ve been led to believe. America is a country built on dreams, MLK’s dream, the American Dream, even Obama’s dreams from his father, and failure, although sometimes an intermediate result, is never a goal. That’s where Rush gets it so wrong.

In America, we love dreams and we love seeing people pull through when everyone else is sure they’re going to fail. Kirk Gibson in the ’88 World Series. Willie Mays’ catch. The Tampa Bay Rays’ run to the pennant. No one gave any of them a chance but somehow they managed to overcome failure and succeed beyond their (and our) wildest imagination. When failure is an end instead of a means, dreams die and you become irrelevant.

Rush’s problem and, by extension, the problem of the Republican Party is that their actions have begun to cast them as irrelevant to the national debate. Wishing failure on your opponents doesn’t make you a seer. It makes you a streetcorner prophet, carrying your cardboard sign and sleeping on a park bench at night. It doesn’t signal engagement but rather disengagement.

The real issue and what Rush is afraid to say is that it’s not so much that he disagrees with Obama as it is that he has no solution of his own. After the experiment of the past eight years proved morally and financially bankrupt, how could he? However, the purview of the streetcorner lunatic has always included yelling louder than everyone else and making sure that yours is the voice that stands out. In that respect, Rush can truly claim, “Mission Accomplished.”

Yet spring training is supposed to be that time of year when every team has a shot at being the best, every team has the opportunity to go all the way, every team can hope to be champions — well, every team not named the Pirates, Royals and now: The St. Louis Cardinals.

That’s right, folks. The Cardinals were big losers before they even got to camp thanks to one General Manager John Mozeliak. It is no secret that I hold little regard for the man who did nothing to better our ball club during this off-season, so I will refrain from further condemning him back to the bookish hell from which he originally oozed.

What I will do instead is make it easy for you, dear readers, Cardinal lovers and Cardinal haters alike: those days of St. Louis fans harboring perennial playoff hopes are long gone. And all that remains is an empty, blown-out pipedream much akin to that of one Theo Roll, modern dancer extraordinaire.

I wish I was the kind of person who enjoyed aiming low blows at my friends. I’d like to be able to question why someone who will turn 30 thirteen
short days after me is counting down the days to my own birthday. I wish I could sit here and wonder out loud if my friend not having a girlfriend for the last several years somehow affected his cognitive skills. It would be great to openly wonder why he thinks that dousing himself in the smell of BK is effective for picking up women. But, I’m not that kind of person. I’m a real friend.

So, I’m not going to address the spurious accusations made at my expense yesterday. It would be demeaning to all of us and the work we do if I pointed out that most of the baseball intelligentsia thought the Tigers would win the World Series last year and concluded that Dave Dombrowski had hoodwinked the entire league with his off-season moves. I’d be doing no one a favor by saying that Detroit and the state of Michigan have been suffering since the 70’s (just watch The Crow, Gran Torino or Eight Mile to see what I’m talking about) and it’s only natural that its residents hopelessness would also be reflected in their view of sporting pursuits.

No, I refuse to debase myself in the same way as my friend. Instead, in the spirit of this new year full of hope and change, I’m going to say, “good luck, Jeffery.” I hope the Cardinals pick up some relief pitching so AP’s offense isn’t wasted. I hope that 30 treats you well and really is the new 21. And I hope that you go on a date. Seriously, though, you gotta rid of the BK cologne first.

Earlier this week, Senator Hillary Clinton, while feeling immense pressure to get out of the democratic race that she can’t possibly win without tearing apart the party, again proved her desperateness and questionable rationality during a speech in Pennsylvania. It was there that the former first lady likened herself to the hardened fighter from the Rocky film franchise:

“Could you imagine if Rocky Balboa had gotten halfway up those art
museum stairs and said, ‘Well, I guess that’s about far enough’? That’s
not the way it works… Let me tell you something. When it comes to finishing the fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit.”

This quote (and the subsequent authoritative tone with which she gave it) is disturbing on many levels. First of all, Rocky may not have quit, but he still lost the damn fight. And while that was entertaining in itself, it didn’t work out well for him, especially since Apollo Creed turned his face into mush. Secondly, while it was a great film that reached all audiences, the sequels went on ad nauseum, quite like the Clinton campaign. By the time the fifth movie came out, people were uninterested in the tired underdog plot lines that never seemed to change from one film to the next. Only with the death of Apollo Creed in Rocky IV were audiences buzzing about the Rocky series again, which was heightened when Rocky had to face a Soviet robot while we were still in a cold war, so you can see how easy it was for us to be hypnotized by that.

But the third, and most important point, is the simple fact that Rocky Balboa wasn’t real. He was a fictional character in a fictional world that had fictional problems which gave him a fictional reason not to quit. The sad part is many U.S. Americans probably haven’t made this connection — and probably never will because they don’t care.

If I were a Clinton speech writer, I would’ve advised her to use a much more prevalent and tangible analogy — one questioning what would’ve happened had the 2007 Philadelphia Phillies decided to quit before September. What if, seeing how far back in the standings they were behind the Mets with a only a few precious weeks left, J-Rol, R-How and C-Ut decided it was no use to keep fighting? What if Jamie Moyer would’ve hung it up? What if the Phanatic had retired his silliness?

Of course, no matter how you look at it, even this analogy wouldn’t quite ring the Liberty Bell. I mean, unless Barack Obama suddenly loses the ability to pitch in meaningful games and keep his batting average above the Mendoza line, she still doesn’t have a chance.

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